User:Joey Stephenson 98/sandbox

= Article Evaluation = I chose to evaluate the article called Arsenic contamination of groundwater.

I found that almost everything in the article was relevant to the topic. The only part that wasn’t all relevant information was in the section Subterranean arsenic removal (SAR) technology. This section was very biased and had a lot of information just talking about all of the advantages of the technology that wasn’t necessary. There was even a paragraph just talking about awards the technology has won.

All of the information that I checked was up to date.

I found there to be a very uneven amount of information from country to country. There were several large paragraphs under the India and Bangladesh subheading as well as under the United states heading but under the heading for Chile there was only one sentence that provided very little information. I also found the Argentina section to be lacking as they only talked about one location. The large sections on India and Bangladesh make sense as both of those countries have large arsenic related problems however the US does not so it should not have had such a large section.

I found this article to be overall quite neutral however then they were talking about Large scale water treatment they did seem biased towards Subterranean Arsenic Removal (SAR) Technology. They had a whole paragraph talking just about its awards  and two other paragraphs talking very positively about it with no negative points while the other paragraphs talking about other methods of water treatment had both positive and negative points.

I checked several of the citations and most of the ones I checked had links that worked and supported the claims in the article. I found most of the cited references I checked to be good references other than the ones in the section Large scale water treatment where there were very few references and the ones that were there were not all reputable or neutral sources. The sources were not scientific journals and they even had a link to SAR technologies website and SAR technology is one of the methods of water treatment they were talking about.

In the section Speciation of arsenic compounds in water they did not cite any of the information. There was also a paragraph under Small-scale water treatment that didn’t have any references. In the section Large scale water treatment the first 4 paragraphs all didn’t have any references and neither did the 6th, 7th or 8th.

In the Contamination specific nations and regions section under subheading Pakistan they started the first sentence with “66% of 1200 samples tested…” and I would change it to “Of the 1200 samples tested 66%...) because it sounds more proper. In addition in that same sentence they said “…contained arsenic above WHO recommended limit,”. I would switch this to “… contained arsenic concentrations above the World Health Organization’s recommended limit,” because not everyone will know what “WHO” means. These two changes would change the sentence from “66% of 1200 samples tested contained arsenic above WHO recommended limit, threatening over 60 million residents.” To “of the 1200 samples tested 66% contained arsenic levels above the World Health Organisation’s recommended limit, threatening over 60 million residents.” I think this makes the sentence a lot clearer and easier to understand.

In the section for Nepal they said “where 26 percent of shallow wells failed to meet WHO standard of 10ppb.” and they should have said “where 26 percent of shallow wells failed to meet the World Health Organization standard of 10ppb.” This would make the sentence easier to understand.

This article is part of the WikiProject Medicine and has been rated as B-class and of mid importance.

In the talk page someone commented “This section was misnamed and poorly written. If I were an English teacher, I would give the student an F.” This goes against what we have talked about in class as respectful comments.

There is also a comment saying that there were statements that were made and had citations that did not support the statement however that section has been re written since then.

All of the other comments where people suggesting other methods of testing arsenic levels and arsenic removal such as solar powered distillery and bacterial reduction.

= Article Selection = Freshwater Ecosystems-- Has alot of missing information.

Arsenic contamination of groundwater -- Missing alot of citations, uneven amounts of information, and the large scale treatment section is biased.

Clay minerals- has some potential to add information

Fertilizer -- Many sections with little information.

Iron ore - Add information on iron extraction from tailing, add information on other countries contributions and add citations and fix some grammar mistakes

=Iron ore=

Mine Tailings
For every 1 ton of iron ore concentrate produced approximately 2.5-3.0 tons of iron ore tailings will be discharged. Statistics show that there are 130 million tons of iron ore discharged every year. If for example the mine tailings contain an average of approximately 11% iron there would be approximately 1.41 million tons of iron wasted annually. These tailings are also high in other useful metals such as Cu, Ni, and Co and they can be used for road building materials like pavement and filler and building materials such as cement, low grade glass, and wall materials. While tailings are a relatively low grade ore, they are also inexpensive to collect as they don't have to be mined. Because of this companies such as Magnetation Inc. have started reclamation projects where they use iron ore tailings as a source of metallic iron.

The two main methods of recycling iron from iron ore tailings are magnetizing roasting and direct reduction. Magnetizing roasting uses temperatures between 700 and 900 °C for a time of under 1 hour to produce an iron concentrate (Fe3O4) to be used for iron smelting. For magnetizing roasting it is important to have a reducing atmosphere to prevent oxidization and the formation of Fe2O3 because it is harder to separate as it is less magnetic. Direct reduction uses hotter temperatures of over 1000 °C and longer times of 2-5 hours. Direct reduction is used to produce sponge iron (Fe) to be used for steel making. Direct reduction requires more energy as the temperatures are higher and the time is longer and it requires more reducing agent than magnetizing roasting.

United States
In 2014 mines in the United States produced 57.5 million metric tons of iron ore with an estimated value of $5.1 billion. Iron mining in the United States is estimated to have accounted for 2% of the world’s iron ore output. In the United States there are 12 iron ore mines with 9 being open pit mines and 3 being reclamation operations. There were also 10 pelletizing plants, 9 concentration plants, 2 direct-reduced iron (DRI) plants and 1 iron nugget plant that where operating in 2014. In the United States the majority of iron ore mining is in the iron ranges around Lake Superior. These iron ranges occur in Minnesota and Michigan which combined accounted for 93% of the usable iron ore produced in the United States in 2014. Seven of the nine operational open pit mines in the United States are located in Minnesota as well as 2 of the 3 tailings reclamation operations. The other 2 active open pit mines were located in Michigan, in 2016 one of the 2 mines shut down. There have also been iron ore mines in Utah and Alabama however the last iron ore mine in Utah shut down in 2014 and the last iron ore mine in Alabama shut down in 1975.

Canada
In 2017 Canadian iron ore mines produced 49.0 million tons of iron ore in concentrate pellets and 13.6 million tons of crude steel. Of the 13.6 million tons of steel 7 million was exported, and 43.1 million tons of iron ore was exported at a value of $4.6 billion. Of the iron ore exported 38.5%  of the volume was iron ore pellets with a value of $2.3 billion and 61.5% was iron ore concentrates with a value of $2.3 billion. The majority of Canada's iron ore comes from Nunavut and from Labrador along the Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador border.

Brazil
Brazil is the second largest producer of iron ore with Australia being the largest. In 2015 Brazil exported 397 million tons of usable iron ore. In December of 2017 Brazil exported 346,497 metric tons of iron ore and from December 2007 to May 2018 they exported a monthly average of 139,299 metric tons. = My Experience With Wikipedia =

An Introduction of Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. This means it is a resource that can be used to find a summary of what is already known about a large variety of topics. Because it is an encyclopedia, it is important that all of Wikipedia’s articles have a neutral point of view. This means that Wikipedia is not a place to post independent work or your personal opinions. Wikipedia is free content that is written by volunteers. This makes it especially important that everything written has a neutral viewpoint. It is also important that people follow Wikipedia’s format with a lead section giving an overview of the rest of the article, the same style for headings and subheadings and always signing your posts on talk pages. This makes it so that no matter what article you go to on Wikipedia it will have the same format and be easy to find your information.

All through high school and even in some of my university courses I have had teachers, instructors and professors telling me that Wikipedia is not a good source and should not be cited in any essays or projects. However after my time using Wikipedia in this class I have realized how valuable of a resource Wikipedia truly is. While it is true that almost anyone can edit Wikipedia there is also a very good peer review process that will remove any inappropriate, incorrect or uncited information. In addition because every fact in Wikipedia is cited and has an link to an external source it is very easy to verify that the information provided is accurate. Wikipedia is very useful in the fact that someone, and in most cases many people, have already taken the time to research the topic, gather many different sources, and summarize them into an easy to understand and fact based article.

Article Critique
For the article evaluation we were given a list of points to keep in mind while reading an article. I have listed the points below. When I was doing my article evaluation I focused on all of the points given in the instructions. I would chose one of the points to focus on and then read the entire article with that point in mind and then write down notes for that topic. Then I would pick another point to focus on and do the same thing until I was done with all of the points. Then I would go over all of my notes and rewrite them with full sentences. I found this task to be very helpful because it helped me understand what makes a good article and what to focus on while writing my contribution to an article and what to pay attention to while doing my peer edits.

Points to keep in mind while evaluating an article:

The first quality of a good article is that everything in the article is relevant to the article topic and there is nothing distracting from the topic. The next quality of a good article is that none of the information is out of date and there is nothing missing that could be added. The next point is to check to make sure the article is neutral and that there are no claims that are heavily biased towards a particular position. It is also important for a good article to not have any viewpoints that are over or under represented. The next quality to check is that the links for the citations work and the source supports the claims of the article. It is very important for a good article to have every fact referenced from a good source. A good source must be reliable, neutral and unbiased. The last step for evaluating an article is to look at the talk page of that article. A good article will have respectful conversations and people giving good constructive feedback. It is also important to check how the article is rated and if it is part of any Wikiprojects.

Peer Review
When evaluating a Wikipedia or commenting on someone’s article it is very important to remember to always be respectful and courteous while still giving your feedback. This feedback isn’t meant to be derogatory, it is meant to be constructive criticism and suggestions on how they can improve their article.

When I was conducting my peer reviews I focused a lot on editing grammar and making sure all of their sentences were easy to read and understand. I thought that was an important thing to focus on because even if they had a lot of good information, if it was worded poorly and was hard to understand people would just ignore it. I also went through all of the points from the checklist given to us for the article evaluation.

Feedback
When you receive feedback on your article or contribution it is important to remember that they are not trying to suggest that your article is bad, they are simply trying to give you advice on how you can improve your article. Because of this it is important to respond respectfully and thank them for their input and then take their comments into consideration and make any of the necessary changes.

The feedback I received from the peer reviews on my article contributions was helpful however I don’t believe I received enough feedback. Initially I only received one review and all it said was that everything was good and maybe check to make sure one of the sections was neutral. When I received this comment I immediately responded saying thankyou for the review and then I re-read the section they had mentioned and changed some of the wording to make it more neutral. Then later I received a second review from a TA saying to make sure I had citations for all of the facts. After I received this comment I read though my contribution and made sure I had put citations for all of my facts. While doing this I ended up adding a few citations that I had forgotten. After that I responded to that peer review thanking them for the advice. Because I had initially only received one review I decided that I would ask some people outside of this class to read over my contribution and give any advice. I also left a comment on the talk page for the article I was adding to when I added my contributions asking people to give any advice or changes they thought I should make. I have been monitoring that talk page and haven’t received any comments as of yet.

Contribution Summary
The article I decided to add to was called “Iron ore”. It already had a lot of good information in it however it was also missing some important information. It had a section called “Available iron ore resources” but this section only had information on iron ore deposits in Australia. I also noticed that it had a lot of sections with little or no citations. The first thing I focused on for my contributions was adding information on iron ore resources in countries other than Australia. I thought this was an important addition to the article because it is important that Wikipedia articles are neutral and nothing is over or under represented. I added sections on iron ore production in Canada, The United States, and Brazil. I also added a section on mine tailings reclamation because there wasn’t any mention of it in the article. I thought this was important information to add because it is becoming increasingly common as other iron ore reserves are becoming depleted. I was originally planning on adding more citations for the other sections however I was having trouble finding any good sources for the information that was already there so I was only able to add a few citations for the rest of the article. Overall I believe that my contributions added valuable information and have improved this article.

Final Thoughts
I found this course to be very informative. It required me to do a lot of research on the topic and gather a lot of information. This resulted in me having a much deeper understanding of my topic. It also required me to do a significant amount of research of the topics of the articles that I peer reviewed. I found this assignment to be much more interesting than simply writing an essay or report in that it also taught me the value of Wikipedia as a resource.

Wikipedia is such a large website with more visitors everyday than twitter or CNN it is a great way to inform the public on our field. Most people only have very basic understanding of the different resources and processes required to make everyday things. I think this is a very important topic for people to know more about to encourage them to be less wasteful and more appreciative of how much material is required to make even a simple thing and that these resources are not unlimited.